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The Crooked Sessions
The Crooked Sessions is a 2010 album by Brunanter indie folk rock band The Towners. The album is an accompanying piece to the television series Small Town Crooks which is set in Charles Town, the band's home town. After already featuring The Towners on its soundtrack, the show's music producer, Martin Bristle, personally approached the band once again late 2009 with the idea of making an album inspired by Small Town Crooks. The band members were fans of the series and quickly came up with a concept. They locked themselves up in a rented house in Charles Town and over the course of two weeks, they watched and re-watched one or two episodes a day, and wrote and recorded a song the other. Track listing #'Small Town Crooks' - 3:39 #'Bottom Up / Patrickson Avenue' - 5:32 #'Ériu / A Night at the Ritz' - 3:57 #'Family Only' - 2:27 #'Baile' - 2:54 #'Hold Me in Hell / Bean Álainn' - 3:59 #'The Emerald Dream' - 2:34 #'Charles Town Green / Back to Normal' - 3:59 #'21' - 2:50 #'Ourselves Alone / A Dangerous Gentleman' - 5:03 #'The Winter Wren' - 3:04 #'Guff and Trumpery' - 3:07 #'The Dawn of Reason / Masks and Faces' - 3:52 #'Lifeguard / Scruff of the Century' - 4:38 #'Mac' - 2:13 #'Under God's Power She Thrives' - 3:37 #'Dearly Departed' - 16:09 #'Nay (They Say)' (hidden track) Reviews The Crooked Sessions received average to good reviews. "The attention for The Towners is deserved", wrote Appeal, "however, unfortunately, sadly, regrettably, this record isn’t indicative of their best work. The band cares enough about their music to place technical proficiency in the backseat, while letting impassioned strumming, off-key singing and off-mic screaming drive home just what they mean. But, these strengths are better embodied in their mid- to up-tempo songs, and The Crooked Sessions is weighted down by slowness and drawn-out harmonies. This is a band that excels when it colors outside of the lines, and it is their previous albums and live shows that best showcase their bright and fast scribbling. Their intensity just isn’t as prominent on songs that dominate this release. The album’s overall sequencing is poor and the songs never build to a consistent pace. The best and brightest songs on the album are the heavily strummed ones with ramshackle harmonies, but The Crooked Sessions doesn't present the colorful spectrum of The Towners’ strengths, and the highlights are too few and far between to wholly recommend this release." Everything Music also addressed the album's lack of energy and total length, but was more positive. "The first cuts of The Crooked Sessions reveal that The Towners' style of folk (with lots of other stuff thrown into the mix) is intriguingly left of center. And while some listeners may be somewhat tired of depressed types who sing in a nasal drone, they're probably not used to hearing the singer backed by kitchen-sink arrangements that include piano, harmonica, and shouting that stands in for background singing. As the album moves on the band continues to make good music, but these songs lack the raw energy of the first tracks. Things pick up again after the first half, but the songs, though quite good, fail to match the intensity of the openers. One feels, in the end, that The Crooked Sessions, at nearly 74 minutes, is just too darn long. Nonetheless, The Towners' style is much fresher and more fun than the average folk or alternative country group's, and is well worth checking out for those tired of the same old, same old." Category:Music albums Category:Small Town Crooks Category:The Towners